Russo LSA 2019 1 LSA Institute 2019: Sound Change (handout 6) Phonological lenition and Fortition in Romance (1) Latin merger of /b/ with /w/ in intervocalic position. (2) Word-initially: Latin /b/ and /w/ remain distinct in Italian and French (but not in Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, Central and Southern Italian dialects): (3) In postcoda position, Italian and French keep /b/ and /w/ distinct, whereas in Spanish they merge (also in Catalan and in some Southern and Central Italian dialects): (4) Lenition of intervocalic Latin -D- (5) The consonant strength gradient :
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Russo LSA 2019
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LSA Institute 2019: Sound Change (handout 6)
Phonological lenition and Fortition in Romance
(1) Latin merger of /b/ with /w/ in intervocalic position.
(2) Word-initially: Latin /b/ and /w/ remain distinct in Italian and French (but not in
Spanish, Catalan, Occitan, Central and Southern Italian dialects):
(3) In postcoda position, Italian and French keep /b/ and /w/ distinct, whereas in Spanish
they merge (also in Catalan and in some Southern and Central Italian dialects):
(4) Lenition of intervocalic Latin -D-
(5) The consonant strength gradient :
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(6) Lenition of intervocalic plosives:
(7) What happens to original voiceless stops /p t k/?
- They remain intact in Italian (but see: lago ‘lake’ Lat. LACU, spada ‘sword’ Lat.
SPATA etc.).
- In French, which exhibits the most drastic lenition, /p/ survives as /v/ while /t/, /k/ lenite
all the way to zero.
- In Spanish, Catalan and central and Southern Italian dialects they produce fricatives [β
ð ɣ].
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(8) What happens to original voiced stops /b d g/?
- Italian keeps them intact except that the labial is /v/ intervocalically.
- Spanish and Catalan generally have the same [β ð ɣ] as came from voiceless stops,
except that original /d/ lenites all the way to zero in some words.
- In French, /b d g/ behave like /p t k/, namely: /b/ survives as /v/ while /d/, /g/ lenite all
the way to zero.
- In Central and Southern Italian dialects /b d g/ vary as [β ð ɣ] according to phonotactic
variation – see below – as for Spanish and Catalan:
→ In Spanish, Catalan and Central and Southern Italian the fricative series [β ð ɣ] enters
an allophonic relationship with [b d g]. See below
-In Spanish, Catalan (and Occitan [b]) the stop allophones occur in word-initial position
and post-nasal positions.
- In addition, in Spanish /ld/ clusters are [ld] not [lð] (but they can be [lð] in Catalan and
in Southern Italian dialects). BUT see (3).
- Spanish, Catalan, Occitan are the Romance languages that have no /v/.
- Letter <v> is only a variant spelling for the labial phoneme /b/ = [b, β].
- In Ibero-Romance and Gallo-Romance (Occitan), the series /p t k/ ultimately merged
with the series /b d g/.
(9) Positional Lenition (Complex groups):
(10) In typology and diachrony the initial position is seen to be strong compared to
the other positions:
• It hosts more contrasts and a wider array of consonants.
• It is asymmetrically resistant to weakening/change over time.
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- In phonological theory, the phonological models of positional strength have built the
inherent strength of the initial position into the system.
- A widespread view is that the strength of initial positions is a design feature of
(phonological) grammar.
(10) Initial phonological Lenition in Italo-Romance dialects?
- However, in Central and Southern Italian dialects, initial voiced stops: /b d g/ are
weakened to fricatives, liquids or glides: [v], [r] and [j, w, v].
- The initial weakening in these dialects is not a product of lenition, rather it is the case
that the initial position is playing host to a wider set of contrasts which set up quasi-
morphological paradigms.
- Roots come in strong and weak forms depending on their morphemic environment.
- This view preserves the hypothesis that initial positions are inherently strong because it
is only in a strong position which can host such a quasi-morphological contrast.
(10) The Pattern (as traditionally presented)
- In Central and Southern Italian dialects, the weak variant of the stop is found both in absolute
initial position and intervocalically, whereas, the strong variant is found in post-consonantal
position and in positions created by Raddoppiamento Sintattico ‘syntactic doubling’ (RS).
(i) Medieval and Modern Neapolitan (labial voiced stop pattern)
(a) ##_ absolute initial position
Neap. Ita. Gloss
vasta basta ‘enough’
viato beato ‘lucky’
(b) V_V internal words or at words boundaries
sivo sebo ‘sebum’
(povera) vestia bestia ‘beast’
li vagne i bagni ‘the bathrooms’
(c) Raddoppiamento Sintattico (RS)
/ v / → [ b: ] / ØC #_
tre/ØC/ [b:]ote tre volte ‘three times’
a/ØC/ [b:]iento al vento ‘in the wind’
(d) More RS (traditionally referred to as post-consonantal RS)
no/ØN/ [b:]ego non vedo ‘cannot see’
pe/ØC/ [b:]encere per vincere ‘to win’
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(11) How the Pattern clashes with Phonological Models
- Typically, strength and weakness in words is distributed as shown in (ii).